IACR, Fast Software Encryption, 2009, Preface

Fast Software Encryption 2009 is the 16th in a series of workshops on symmetric key cryptography. Starting from 2002, it is sponsored by the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR). FSE 2009 was held in Leuven, Belgium, after previous venues were held in Cambridge, UK (1993, 1996), Leuven, Belgium (1994, 2002), Haifa, Israel (1997), Paris, France (1998, 2005), Rome, Italy (1999), New York, USA (2000), Yokohama, Japan (2001), Lund, Sweden (2003), New Delhi, India (2004), Graz, Austria (2006), Luxembourg, Luxembourg (2007), and Lausanne, Switzerland (2008).

The workshop main topic is symmetric key cryptography, including the design of fast and secure symmetric key primitives, such as block ciphers, stream ciphers, hash functions, message authentication codes, modes of operation and iteration, as well as the theoretical foundations of these primitives.

This year, 76 papers were submitted to FSE including a large portion of papers on hash functions, following the NIST SHA-3 competition, whose workshop was held just after FSE in the same location. From the 76 papers, 24 were accepted for presentation. It is my pleasure to thank all the authors of all submissions for the high quality research, which is the base for the scientific value of the workshop. The review process was thorough (each submission received the attention of at least three reviewers), and at the end, besides the accepted papers, the committee decided that the merits of the paper Blockcipher Based Hashing Revisited entitle the paper the best paper award. I wish to thank all committee members and the referees for their hard and dedicated work.

The workshop also featured two invited talks, the first was given by Shay Gueron about "Intel's New AES Instructions for Enhanced Performance and Security" and the second was given by Matt Robshaw about "Looking back at the eSTREAM Project". Along the presentation of the papers and the invited talks, the traditional rump session was organized and chaired by Daniel J. Bernstein.

I would like to thank Thomas Baignères for the iChair review management software, which facilitated a smooth and easy review process, and Shai Halevi for the Web Submission and Review Software for dealing with the proceedings.

A special thanks is due to the organizing team. The COSIC team from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, headed by the program chair Bart Preneel, done a wonderful job in hosting the workshop. The warm welcome that waited to more than 200 delegates from all over the world was unblemished. The support given to FSE 2009 workshop by the sponsors Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, PriceWaterhouseCoppers, and Oberthur technologies is also gratefully acknowledged.